This. Is. March.
March is my favorite month of the year. Not because of Lent or spring weather finally coming in, but rather because of March Madness. The NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament is one of the most exciting times of the year as fans from their respective alma maters cheer on their college to go try and win a championship. With this tournament approaching, I wanted to analyze teams that made the tournament and how they differentiated from one another. The data set I used looks at the NCAA tournament teams from 2013-2019, and looks at the team statistics for each team. Many of my visualizations will look at what separates the teams that get eliminated in the first round to teams that end up being crowned national champions.
Visualization 1: Measuring Offensive and Defensive Efficiency
Looking at NCAA tournament teams, I wanted to see how teams’ offensive and defensive efficiency are.Both measurements look at points scored and allowed per 100 possessions Facet wrapping this by where teams finished in the tournament,the best teams seem to at least have an offensive efficiency of 110 and a defensive efficiency of under 100.This graph could be used as a starting point to see criteria needed for national championship teams as many tournament teams fail to put up these two basic efficiency numbers.
Visualization 2: Which Conference Reigns Supreme
I like this basic graph because it shows which conference sends the most teams to the tournament. Looking at the graph, the three best conferences are the ACC, Big Ten, and Big East.Of the power conferences, the Pac-12 looks to be the most lacking of the group, not sending nearly as many tournament teams as the others.Lastly, the Atlantic 10 has suprisingly sent a lot of teams to the tournament over this span.
#Visualization 3: Do Not Make Mistakes Visualization 1 is a starting point that analyzes efficiency on both ends of the floor. However, the graph does not emphasize things such as what other statistics stand out. This visualization looks at how the top teams do in the turnover battle in comparison to teams of lower seeding. TOR looks at turnovers committed by the team, and TORD looks at turnovers forced by the team.Facet wrapped by seed, the top seeds take much better care of the ball. As the seed number goes up, the more it seems like teams turn the ball over. 
Visualizations 4 and 5 and 6: 2 Pointers versus 3 Pointers
These three graphs look at what is more important, 2 pointers or 3 pointers.Graph 4 looks at 2 point offense and defense.The major takeaway I had was that best teams limit opponent’s 2 point field goal percentages.However, there is not much difference between teams once they make it to the elite 8.For graph 5, I looked at 3 point offense and defense, and this graph does not offer much in terms of offense. Defensively, it looks like the championship level teams defend the three a little bit better. However, comparing the two, it looks like 2 point offense and 3 point defense should be a higher point of emphasis for teams. I put that in for my sixth graph, and it shows that almost every team that makes it to the national championship shoots at least 50% from two point range and has opponents only shoot 34.5% from 3 point range.
